Meet my new friend, the Jawbone UP bracelet. I had read about the UP over the past few months on the tech blogs and thought it sounded like a pretty cool device. And someone tipped me off that they had hit the stores, so I immediately picked one up. You know I'm a sucker for a new gadget. Especially when it's supposed to make my life better! I have had the UP for just over a week now and have to say... I love it.

The UP is supposed to help you 'move' more - it tracks your steps, distance, pace, intensity level and calories associated with those activities. You can tell it to remind you to move - like when you're sitting in front of the computer working all day, it will give you a gentle reminder to get up and move around a bit. I find this super useful - it's so good to know what calories you're burning on a regular basis and then you can really see when you need to pick it up and get moving more.

The UP tracks your sleep too! This is probably my favorite feature of the UP. It tracks hours slept, when you're in deep vs. light sleep, if you wake up in the middle of the night and then gives you an overall picture of the night. Honestly, I have no idea how it does this, but it does. And it sure seems to be right! I program it to wake me at a specific time and it will wake me within a 20-30 min window before that time. It wakes me in light sleep and I feel Sooooooooooooo much better when I wake up. See, I had gotten into this horrible rut of setting my alarm and hitting the snooze a couple of times before I actually drag my butt out of bed. By looking at my sleep patterns, I totally get why this was such a bad thing! When I fall asleep, I fall direct into deep sleep, so if you wake me up 5 min into that I am going to be much more groggy than if I just get up a few minutes earlier but while in light sleep. This has seriously been THE. BEST. FEATURE. for me!!

So the only feature I don't love is the food tracking. You're supposed to take a quick photo of your food and the UP will ask you a little while later in the day how that food makes you feel (via smiley faces). The idea is that you can see what foods energize you and those that make you feel yucky. Well... for me, since it doesn't also track calories and such, I find that I don't really use it. Maybe they will do something to expand on it in the future that will get me a little more interested ... but despite this feature, the UP has been a fabulous addition to my life! Snap one up and let me know how you like it!